The Dark on the Other Side

I

THE FANTASIES AND SELF-DOUBTS OF THE NIGHT were easy to dismiss in the cold light of dawn-which was not only cold, but gray, rainy, and sooty. But it was several days before Michael could make himself stop listening for footsteps coming toward his door.

He threw himself into work as a cure for mental degeneration, and found that after a while he didn’t have to force himself; the hunt was up, and as usual it gradually gripped him. Even the inevitable frustrations were minor challenges, to be overcome.

One such challenge was Randolph ’s book. Michael could have sworn he owned a copy of The Smoke of Her Burning; it took two hours of disorganized search before she would admit that he no longer owned it. He kept meaning to get his books arranged in some kind of order, but they wouldn’t let themselves be arranged; every time he started the project, he ended up with piles all over the floor and himself sitting cross-legged in the middle of the debris, deep in some fascinating volume he had forgotten he owned. The bookshelves were as motley as the volumes they housed; he had always meant to have some bookcases built in…

What had he done with Randolph ’s book? Damn it, he had to read Randolph ’s book, that was the least a biographer could do. Standing in the middle of the floor, like a pillar in the midst of a forum paved with literature, Michael scratched his chin. He must have given it to someone. Why hadn’t he read it himself? That was not unusual, though; he was a compulsive book buyer, and his collection included a deplorably large group that he had never had time to read. He would just have to buy another copy of The Smoke of Her Burning.

But it wasn’t that easy. The book was out of print. After all, as the third bookdealer pointed out waspishly, the printing presses of America poured out thousands of new books every year. You couldn’t expect them to keep every old title in stock. Oh, sure, The Smoke of Her Burning had been an important book. But you couldn’t expect…

So Michael tried the secondhand bookstores and encountered another snare; he could waste days in such places. He finally found the book, but not until he had loaded himself with old masterpieces he hadn’t been looking for and probably wouldn’t read-including, for reasons he refused to consider, a worn copy of somebody’s History of Witchcraft. By the time he got home, he had transferred his annoyance to Gordon’s book, and no longer wanted to read it.

There were plenty of other things to be done. He spent two afternoons in the newspaper morgues reading about the public exploits of Gordon Randolph. It was an unexpectedly depressing activity. Some of the yellowed, crumbling clippings were over twenty years old; the face of a young Gordon Randolph mummified by antique newsprint made any attempt at immortality seem futile.

The clippings came from sports pages, literary columns, and the general-news sections, but there was one significant omission. Randolph ’s name did not appear in the gossip columns. Rarely, there might be a mention of his presence at some charity affair or concert, but he never escorted a lady who was not impeccable in reputation and social status. Either Randolph ’s private life was arranged with a circumspection that verged on Top Secret, or he was abnormally well behaved. Not a wild oat in the whole field.

His marriage had rated a long column, and the lady reporter gave it the Cinderella approach-Professor Weds Student, Millionaire Marries Policeman’s Daughter. They had been married at the college chapel. There was a picture of Linda Randolph in her wedding dress, and Michael found it more depressing, for different reasons, than Gordon’s photographs. Poor as the print was, it conveyed something of that quality Randolph had vainly tried to describe. It conveyed something else-happiness. She glowed with it, even through cheap paper and smeary ink. From that, Michael thought, to what I saw three days ago. He turned the page quickly.

All of it, sports achievements, literary kudos, political successes, were dry bones. This was just the beginning. The next step was to talk to people who knew Randolph. So, on Wednesday, Michael got his car out and drove up to the campus of the well-known Ivy League school where Randolph had matriculated.

He had taken the precaution of providing himself with a general letter of introduction, and it finally got him into the sanctum of a Vice-President in charge of something. Public Relations, to judge from the gray-haired gentleman’s suave manner. The President of the university was unavailable. Probably away on a fund-raising campaign, Michael thought-or building barricades in preparation for the spring campaign of the SDS. Not that it mattered. Anything the President would say about one of his most illustrious alumni wouldn’t be worth peanuts. The same thing was true of the Vice-President. Michael only needed him as a source of references.

“I’m afraid there are very few of Mr. Randolph’s former professors available,” the Vice-President explained winsomely. “Now although I was not myself in residence at the time, I have followed Mr. Randolph’s career with interest, and I might say…”

He recapitulated Randolph ’s public career, which Michael could have recited from memory, for ten minutes before Michael could stop him.

“I want to talk to people who actually knew him,” Michael explained.

The Vice-President hesitated, torn between irritation and caution. How these pompous asses did love to see their names in print, Michael thought. The man was smart enough to know that if he vexed the biographer, his name might appear amid adjectives that would make him writhe. The pungent style of the periodical that had commissioned the biography was well known.

“Well, of course, this was twenty years ago,” the V.P. said, with a slight sniff. “Most of our professors are mature men when they are at the height of their careers; by now the majority are retired or-hem-deceased. And, while people tend to think of the academic profession as static, there is in actual fact-”

“A lot of job shifting,” Michael interrupted. “I know that. I’ll do the tracking down myself. All I really need are the names of Randolph ’s professors and their current addresses, if they are available.”

“Well, if you insist, Mr.-”

Michael insisted. When the file was produced, the Vice-President brooded over it.

“Physics; Professor Kraus. Emeritus, now, of course; I believe he returned to Germany or Austria. If he’s still alive…Sociology; that would be Professor Smith, he is now at Elm College, in the-er- Midwest somewhere.”

“ Chicago,” Michael said.

“Somewhere of that sort, yes. I don’t know that he would be of much help to you; Mr. Randolph only took one of his courses. Now his major, naturally, was English; the chairman at that time was Professor-”

He looked up, his eyes widening, and Michael nodded.

“Collins. He was my father. He’s dead. Ten years ago.”

“I’m sorry… Well, then, let me see, there was Doctor Wilkes…”

Not a single one of Randolph ’s former professors was still in residence. Michael finally escaped with a very short list. Four of the men were still living, two in Europe and one at Harvard, plus the unfortunate exile in the Midwest. Michael went home and wrote letters. He couldn’t go traipsing off to Munich to interview a man who had taught Randolph algebra twenty years ago. The man at Harvard was on sabbatical leave.

He had begun his investigations with the academic world not only because it was more in line with his own interests but because he believed in the importance of that period in character formation. Sooner or later, he would have to interview Randolph ’s business associates. Talk about a subject being outside your field; he wasn’t even sure what Randolph ’s business was. One of those massive conglomerates that included manufacturing, investments, oil wells, and God knows what else. But there were offices someplace in the city; if there wasn’t a Randolph Building, it was presumably only because Randolph hadn’t got around to constructing one. Yes, eventually he’d have to talk to the inhabitants of the business world, but he had no illusions about that; no one who worked for Randolph was going to tell him anything interesting.

So the next step was the college where Randolph had taught. It was in Pennsylvania; not a long drive, but he decided to plan to stay overnight, since that particular episode was fairly recent, and there ought to be a number of witnesses still available-possibly even a few students working for advanced degrees.

A sullen sun sulked above the skyscrapers when he left the city, but it wasn’t until he had bypassed Philadelphia that he felt any awareness of spring. The Main Line suburbs reminded him of the countryside around Randolph ’s home-manicured lawns and smug, neat houses, flowers and kids playing in the front yard. Things were blooming.

This time he had taken the precaution of setting up an interview in advance, by phone, and he saw, not a Vice-President, but the Vice-Chancellor. Michael had read too much history to have much faith in revolution as a means of social progress; but every time he met a college administrator, he was aware of a sneaking sympathy for the militant students. The Vice-Chancellor might have been a brother of the Vice-President-the same graying hair and discreet tie, the same canny brown eyes. Michael sniffed. Yes; they even used the same scent. Christ, he thought; and placed a look of intelligent interest on his face as the Vice-Chancellor lectured.

“I was a mere Assistant Professor at the time,” he explained with a deprecating smile. “Nor was Gordon in my department. Economics is my field.”

“Then you didn’t know him well?”

“We had several interesting chats at the Faculty Club.”

In a pig’s eyes, Michael thought crudely.

“What did you talk about? Economics?”

“Among other things. He was very well informed for a layman, very much so. A brilliant mind, of course. And capable in a wide range of subjects. That is of course the outstanding factor in his personality. And that’s what you’re interested in, isn’t it, my dear fellow? His personality. I’m sure everyone who knew Gordon was struck by that-the breadth of his interests.”

It went on in this vein for some time. Michael had suspected from the first that this pompous ass could not have won Gordon’s friendship, and after half an hour of name dropping and burbling generalities, he was sure of it. It took him another half hour to extract the information he wanted. When he left, the Vice-Chancellor sent his regards to dear old Gordon.

On the steps of the Administration Building, Michael saw a bearded youth attired in a red plaid poncho selling copies of the school paper. He bought a copy. The picture on the front was a scurrilous caricature, badly drawn but recognizable, of the Vice-Chancellor. Michael turned back.

“Contribution to the cause,” he said, and went on his way leaving the hairy young man looking in bewilderment at the five-dollar bill in his hand.

It took Michael the rest of the day to find one of the teachers who had been Randolph ’s colleagues. Though they all had offices and office hours, nobody seemed to be in his office at the specified time-or, if he was, he refused to answer the door. (Michael could have sworn he heard harried breathing inside one locked and unresponsive room.) What were they afraid of? he wondered. Students? Which wasn’t so funny, nowadays…He finally caught one man as he was making a surreptitious exit, and when Martin Buchsbaum found he was not a student, he invited him in.

Buchsbaum was a youngish man, chubby and pink, with a nose that looked as if it had once been broken, and a cherubic smile.

“ Randolph? Sure, I met him. But I never knew the guy, not to talk to. I had just made my Assistant Professorship, didn’t even have tenure. He was one of the sheep, and I was the lowest of the goats. You know, the sheep and the-”

“I know. My father was a teacher.”

“Then you do know. The gulf between the tenured and the non-tenured is wider than the one between the Elect and the Damned. I’m sorry, friend, but I can’t tell you anything about the Great Man. He was lionized, idolized-”

“Even canonized?”

“Man can’t even plagiarize a quotation these days,” said Buchsbaum amiably. “What did your old man teach, English Lit?”

“Right.”

“It doesn’t follow, though. I threw a chunk of Andrew Marvell at a cop once. He not only capped the quote, he went ahead and gave me a ticket.”

“Amere traffic ticket? Weren’t you out there hurling obscenities and bricks at the police last fall?”

“I was.” Buchsbaum’s face was glum. “I slipped and fell and sprained my sacroiliac while I was running away. Cost me seventy-eight bucks for doctor bills. After that I decided I was too old and too underpaid to be a liberal.”

Michael laughed. He got up to go a little reluctantly; Buchsbaum was a pleasant change from the Vice-Chancellor.

“Stick around,” Buchsbaum suggested. “A man who knows his Fry is a man worth knowing. Or, better still, come home, meet the wife, have a beer. I’ll try you on the more obscure metaphysical poets.”

“If I didn’t have eight more people to track down today, I’d accept with pleasure. I used to enjoy this sort of thing, in my younger days. You ivory-tower boys have a nice life.”

“You are viewing it with the rosy glow of old age remembering lost youth. Don’t kid yourself. Why do you think I skulk around the halls with my collar turned up like James Bond? Students, committees, secretaries wanting lists of things, parents, students…”

“Without the students you wouldn’t have a job.”

“Don’t give me that; I’ve quit being a liberal.” Buchsbaum put his feet up on the desk and adjusted them so that he could look between them at Michael. “We all hate students. Most of my peers aren’t that blunt about it; they blather on about the book they haven’t been able to finish and the vital research they can’t carry out because of their onerous teaching load. The majority of them couldn’t write a book if you dictated it to them. What they mean is, they hate students. Like me.”

“What about Linda Randolph? Did you know her?”

Later, Michael was to wonder what made him ask the question. He had meant to throw out some feelers about Linda; this was where Randolph had met her. But she was not his main interest.

“I knew her,” Buchsbaum said.

“That romance must have caused a lot of comment.”

“You could say that.”

“I’ve met her. She’s charming, isn’t she?”

“Is she?” The feet were still on the desk, the stout body as relaxed; but the pink face wasn’t friendly any longer. Feeling idiotically rebuffed, Michael turned toward the door. Buchsbaum said suddenly,

“Sit down, Collins. Don’t go away mad. I’m sorry if I sounded…Hell, I was in love with the girl, of course.”

“Of course?”

“Most of her teachers were.”

“Not the students?”

“Oddly enough, no. Caviar to the general, you know.”

“Cut that out.”

“Sorry, it’s a bad habit. No; I think she put the kids off a bit-the callow youth. She was bright as they come, and the juvenile male doesn’t care for that kind of challenge. But…”

He was silent for a time, staring reflectively at the tip of his left shoe; and Michael was reminded of Gordon, groping in the same way for words to describe his wife. When Buchsbaum began to speak, his voice was soft and abstracted, as if he were talking to himself.

“We make cynical remarks about the lousy students. Most of the mare, you know. They don’t give a damn-they lack motivation, in the current jargon-and even if they have motivation, they don’t have the intelligence of a medium-bright porpoise. Day after day you stand up there on your podium and you strip your brain and throw it out, into a sea of dead faces, and it falls flat on the floor and dies there. But now and then-once a year, once out of a thousand students, if you’re lucky-you look around and see a face that isn’t a flat doughy mass with the right number of holes in it for eyes and nose and mouth. It’s a face, a real face. The eyes are alive, the mouth responds to the things you say. When you make a joke, the eyes shine. When you throw out an idea that takes a little cogitation, the forehead actually wrinkles-something is going on behind it, some gears are really meshing. When you say something that-that moves her, the mouth curves at the corners, not much, just a little, up or down depending on whether she’s moved to laughter or to tenderness…”

The pronoun had slipped out, but Buchsbaum didn’t try to retract it. His eyes moved from his shoe to Michael’s face, and he smiled.

“The Reminiscences of a Middle-Aged Loser,” he said wryly. “It’s true, though; every teacher knows about it. The quality of the response differs. Hers was unique. I won’t say that I wasn’t affected by the fact that she was also a gorgeous dish.”

“I’m sorry,” Michael said, realizing that the revelations were finished. “I didn’t mean to probe into your private affairs.”

“Sure you did.” Buchsbaum took his feet off the desk and stood up. It was dismissal. He was friendly, but guarded, now. “Only you wanted me to talk about Gordon, not his wife. Sorry I can’t help you.”

“Have you read his book?”

“Naturally. It’s brilliant. Like everything else the man has done.” Buchsbaum beamed at his visitor. “I hate his bloody guts. You noticed that.”

II

“I hate his bloody guts.”

“If it hadn’t been for him, I’d have killed myself that night.”

“A desperately unhappy man.”

Three interviews, three different comments.

Pacing the dark streets of the town in search of a restaurant that promised something more suited to an over-thirty stomach than pizza or oliveburgers, Michael pondered the results of his day. He had located one other teacher, and one student. The latter, Tommy Scarinski, was on the last leg of his doctorate, having taken off several years because of illness. Michael was fairly sure that the illness had been what is referred to as a nervous breakdown. The boy still twitched. He was a pale, very fair youth, slender as a girl, looking much younger than his twenty-four years. He had idolized Randolph -canonized him, in fact. Michael didn’t doubt that he had contemplated suicide. The impulse was far more common in this age group than most people realized. With the majority of the kids it was only an impulse. Some of them liked to believe that the influence of a friend or lover had been the catalytic agent that deterred them from that most final of all gestures of protest. In this case, though, Michael rather thought that Tommy-it was a mark of his immaturity that he still called himself by the diminutive-did owe his life to Randolph. He had been at the age, and at the stage of mental deterioration, when the influence of an idol could make or break his mind. But-my God, what a responsibility. What a delicate, damnable job. Chalk one up for Randolph.

There was a sign, down the block, that said “Restaurant.” Michael opened the door and saw a dim interior, not too crowded. A waiter appeared promptly. He ordered a drink and a steak and let himself relax against the imitation leather of the booth.

Buchsbaum’s comment wasn’t really a mark against Gordon. It was another example of the man’s sophomoric attempt at wry humor, with strong touches of masochism. Buchsbaum had never been Gordon’s rival, in the ordinary sense of the word; he was the sort of man who would always prefer a romantic illusion to a possible rejection. Most probably he didn’t even dislike Gordon.

And why, Michael wondered irritably, should he be thinking in terms of pluses and minuses? He wasn’t trying to defend Gordon or play the part of Devil’s Advocate; that wasn’t the way he worked. He wanted the truth-and he knew it was never a single isolated fact, but a patchwork of differing, sometimes contradictory, views.

The waiter arrived with the drink, and Michael took a hearty swig of it. He made a wry face. Should have specified the brand; this tasted like something out of a still. But it was better than nothing.

The third interview had been the least productive, for all its verbiage. Professor Seldon was almost at the compulsory retirement age of sixty-five: a diminutive, dapper old man with a mop of white hair and a goatee and beard of the same silky hue. He talked fluently; God, Michael thought with an inner grin, how he did talk! He had been dependent on clichés for so long that he couldn’t have said “Good morning” if Shakespeare or Milton hadn’t happened to say it first. And he was Chairman of the English Department.

Seldon’s comments on Gordon were about as useful as the newspaper accounts had been. Reflex reactions. The remark about Gordon’s tragic unhappiness had some normal human spite behind it, though Professor Seldon would have been genuinely indignant if you pointed that out. He was a third-rate scholar and a second-rate human being; envy of a better man could not be openly expressed, so it masked itself under the guise of benevolent pity. Translated, his remark simply meant: This man has everything I would like to have. Nobody ought to be that happy-except me. So he must be miserable, down deep underneath, where it doesn’t show.

And, ironically, the old man was right. Randolph was an unhappy man. There was a serpent in his Eden, though that was a cliché worthy of Seldon himself. But Seldon had no knowledge of Gordon’s private life. His assessment of Gordon might have come straight out of the high school Class Prophecy: “Bright, intelligent, friendly; bound to succeed.”

Michael caught the waiter’s eyes and nodded. The mellowing effect of the whiskey wasn’t quite complete, he could stand another one. Frustration of this sort was normal, he knew that. Most people weren’t perceptive about other people. Wrapped up in their own miseries, they had no energy to spare for the problems of others; anyhow, they tended to pigeonhole people as they did ideas, and reacted to deviations from a wholly imaginary picture with astonishment and annoyance. “Good old Sam wouldn’t do a thing like that.” “Mary, of all the people in the world; she must have changed a lot since I knew her.” Whereas, of course, Mary hadn’t changed at all. Mary, like everyone else, was not one Mary but a dozen. Her astonished friend had just not happened to see the Mary who finally broke out.

Then why, Michael wondered, was he so irritated by his failure to get an instant, comprehensible picture of a man as complex as Gordon Randolph? Was it because he wasn’t getting any picture at all, not even a misleading one? Hadn’t Randolph had any friends, only associates and disciples?

No. He had not. That was the only useful point Michael had obtained from Seldon.

“Oh, no, Randolph didn’t associate with…us,” he said. Mentally supplying the three missing words, Michael suppressed a smile. “I presume he passed his leisure hours with friends in the city. Except-yes. I recall being surprised, at the time…He spent a good deal of time with the students.”

The emotion that colored his voice-one of the few times that genuine feeling was allowed to show-was simple astonishment. Remembering Buchsbaum’s conversation, and some of the student complaints he had seen published in recent months, Michael understood. His internal amusement, this time, was rather sour. By God, things had changed. He remembered the big, echoing old house where he had grown up; the front door always open and the carpet in the hall worn threadbare with the tread of students’ feet, in and out, at all hours of the day and night. His father had had a funny notion of a teacher’s role… Professor Seldon would probably never know why Michael left so abruptly.

But it was that very lead that had led to his present frustration. The student-teacher relationship, if it was a good one, could be one of the most important in life. He had expected some interesting material from Randolph ’s students. Having gone, posthaste, to look up the enrollment for Randolph ’s class, he was delighted to find that one of the top students was still around. Tommy Scarinski.

Maybe his reasoning had been fallacious. But he didn’t think so, he was inclined to cross Tommy off as an isolated aberration. The best students in the class, the ones who got the highest grades-they still gave letter grades in those bad old days-might not necessarily be the people who had most attracted Gordon, but it was far more likely that his favorites would be found among that group than among the kids whose work had been too poor to rate Gordon’s approval. Besides, the class file included Randolph ’s comments-terse, sympathetic, and intelligent. The four “A” students had received the most favorable comments-with one exception. Miss Alison Dupuis had been dismissed with a curt: “Idiot savant; but how can you flunk a calculating machine?” With the other three, Randolph had obviously enjoyed a personal friendship.

One of the three had been Linda.

The second, Joseph Something or Other, had dropped out of sight. The vinegary spinster at the Registrar’s office could tell him only that Joseph was no longer registered. Well, that was something he could do tomorrow; he had been too pleased at the availability of Tommy Scarinski to check the other records, to see whether Joseph X had matriculated, or transferred to another institution. Graduate school somewhere was a likely possibility, in view of his scholastic record and his teacher’s praise. What had Gordon said? “Genuine creativity and drive-a rare combination.” Yes, Joseph was worth tracking down. The evaluation of a brain like that, sharpened by several years of maturity and by absence from his former mentor, would be valuable. That was why Tommy had been so disappointing: The years hadn’t sharpened his brain, it was still mushy… Poor devil.

The waiter brought his steak, and Michael finished his drink and his deliberations. As he ate he glanced around the room in search of distraction from thoughts that were becoming stale and futile. It was a pleasant, undistinguished little place, like a thousand other restaurants in a hundred other towns. The only thing that made it different was the fact that it was in a college town. There were a lot of students present, mostly couples, and they definitely brightened the scene. The voices were shrill, but they were alive; they got loud with excitement, they vibrated with laughter. Collegiate styles were undoubtedly picturesque. Floppy pants, beads and pendants, clothes that dangled, and jingled, and blazed with color. Michael approved of beards; at least you could tell the boys from the girls that way, and the Renaissance look appealed to him. A couple at a table next to the booth he occupied might have posed as models for the New Look-the boy had long brown hair, and hair over most of the rest of his face; a red kerchief was knotted around his throat. Michael’s eyes lingered longer on his date. The long, straight blond hair obscured her face most of the time, but her legs were in full view. They were booted up to the knee, and what she wore above them, if anything, was hidden by the tablecloth.

Michael signaled the waiter for his coffee. The man lingered, swabbing unnecessarily at the table, and Michael resigned himself.

“Stranger in town?”

“Yes. I’m just here overnight.”

“You busy tonight?”

“No,” Michael admitted, wondering what form the conventional offer would take this time.

“You like music?”

“Well-some kinds,” Michael said, surprised and curious.

“Stick around then, have another cup of coffee. Kwame is due in a few minutes. He’s not bad, if you like that kind of music.”

“Kwame?”

The waiter, a tired-looking man with receding hair, grinned.

“That’s what he calls himself. Real name’s Joe Schwartz.”

“What does he play? The sitar? The viola d’amore?”

“Just the guitar. But, like I said, he’s not bad. If you like that kind of music.”

He moved on to the next table, leaving Michael feeling ashamed of his cynicism. Maybe he ought to get out of the big city more often. It was a hell of a note when you were surprised by ordinary human amiability. The conversation was a lesson for him in another way; it emphasized his point about personality stereotypes. The weary middle-aged waiter was not the sort of person you’d expect to enjoy the music produced by somebody named Kwame, even if he didn’t play the sitar.

His newfound friend was on the alert, and signaled him with a jerk of the head when the performer appeared, but Michael didn’t need the signal. Even in this crowd he would have spotted Kwame.

Such is the power of suggestion that Michael had unconsciously expected the performer to be black-with a name like Joe Schwartz, yet, he told himself. But the sparse expanses of skin visible were of the sickly tan that people choose, for some obscure reason, to call white. The hair was extensive; it made the efforts of the other boys look epicene. Now that, Michael thought admiringly, is a beard!

It swept down in undulating, shining ripples to the boy’s diaphragm, where it mingled with the waves of long brown hair. Although the night was chill and damp, Kwame wore only jeans and a sleeveless embroidered vest, which flopped open with each step, displaying a cadaverous chest. He was barefoot. But his guitar had been carefully swathed against the damp. It was a twelve-string guitar, with a shining surface that might have been produced by Stradivarius or Amati. Expensive, loved, used, and tended like a baby.

There was a tiny podium or stage, about the size of a dining-room table, at the far end of the room, and at another gesture from the waiter, Michael took his cup and moved down to an unoccupied booth near the stage. The other habitués were doing the same thing. Kwame, who had seated himself cross-legged on the floor, placed the guitar across his lap and sat waiting. His eyes moved incuriously around the room, and as they met Michael’s, the latter was conscious of an odd shock. Drugs. The eyes were unmistakable… And why, he wondered cynically, was he shocked? He read the newspapers.

There was no announcement, no introduction. When everyone had seated himself, and silence had become profound, Kwame began to play.

Michael’s first reaction was negative. Kwame’s harsh voice had little appeal for a post-adolescent square who concealed a secret weakness for old Perry Como records, and Kwame’s playing, though competent, was not remarkable. The songs were a mixture of legitimate folk music and modern rock imitations of folk music; a few of them sounded vaguely familiar, but Michael was not sufficiently knowledgeable about the popular repertoire to identify them. All had one theme in common: peace, love, innocence, and the annihilation of all these by man’s cruelty. The mushroom cloud billowing up around the kids playing in the daisy field, the blast of an explosion annihilating the kids in the Sunday School…Kevin Barry lost his young life again, and the lambs were all a-crying. But it was effective. The images were sure fire, they couldn’t miss.

Two of the songs were different. Kwame ended his recital with them, and by that time Michael had succumbed to the same spell that held the rest of the audience. He couldn’t have explained why he was spellbound, none of the elements of the performance were that good. But in combination…

Then Kwame swept his fingers across all twelve strings in a crashing dissonant chord, and broke into a vicious, and extremely funny, satire on the Congress of the United States. Like the others, Michael ached with containing his laughter; he didn’t want to miss the next line. At the same time the cruelty of the satire made him wince, even when he shared Kwame’s opinion of that particular victim. The laughter burst out explosively at the end of the song.

Kwame didn’t give it time to die, but went right into the next number. It was a very quiet song. It was about love, too, and about peace and innocence; but these verses allowed beauty to survive and triumph. The words were very simple, but they were selected with such skill that they struck straight home, into the heart of every compassionate hope. They were articulated with meticulous precision; and as he listened, Michael felt sure that Kwame had written the song himself-and the one that had preceded it. The boy was a magician with words. He made strong magic, did Joe Schwartz… And then, with the suddenness of a blow, Michael realized who Kwame was.

The performance ended as it had begun. Kwame simply stopped playing. Some fans came over to talk to him; and Michael looked up, blinking, to see the waiter standing by him.

“Thanks for telling me,” he said. “I enjoyed that.”

“He’s a good kid,” the waiter said.

“Do you suppose I could buy him a drink, or-”

“He don’t drink.”

“…a cup of coffee? Or maybe a steak?” Michael eyed the protruding ribs of Kwame.

The waiter grinned.

“This isn’t Manhattan,” he said obscurely. “He’ll talk to anybody. Hey, Kwame-friend of mine wants to meet you.”

Kwame looked up. He saw Michael, and his beard divided in a sweet smile.

“Sure,” he said. His speaking voice was as harsh as the one he used for singing, but several tones higher. Two of his fans trailed him as he approached the booth and he gestured toward them, still smiling.

“Okay?”

“Sure,” Michael said. “Join me.”

They settled themselves, Kwame placing his guitar tenderly on a serving table against the wall, where it would not be jostled by passers-by. The waiter lingered.

“You haven’t had dessert,” he said, giving Michael a significant glance.

“Oh. Oh! That’s right, I haven’t. Will you all join me?”

They would, and their orders left Michael feeling old and decrepit. Banana split, chocolate cake à la mode with hot fudge sauce, and a double strawberry frappé sundae for Kwame. Michael ordered apple pie and gave the waiter a nod of thanks as he departed. He ought to have realized that Kwame would be a vegetarian, and he was glad to have been saved from the gaffe of asking the boy if he’d like a steak. It would have been tantamount to offering someone else a nice thick slice off his Uncle Harry.

The food was a useful icebreaker; conversation, at first, was difficult. Kwame spoke hardly at all. Smiling dreamily, he was far out, someplace else. His friends, a blond girl (were they all blondes these days?) and her escort, who had a long cavalry-style moustache, treated Michael with such wary deference that he felt he ought to have a long white beard-and a whip. Yes, that was what they reminded him of-two captured spies in the enemies’ clutches, refusing to speak for fear of giving away vital information. Name, rank, and serial number only…

They loosened up after a while, as Michael plied them with coffee and sympathy, and he began to enjoy himself. They weren’t any more articulate, or sincere, than his generation had been; but they sure as hell were better informed. The much-maligned boob tube, perhaps? More sophisticated; superficially, yes, the little blonde was discussing contraceptives with a wealth of detail his contemporaries had never used in mixed company. Which was okay with him; his hang-ups on that subject weren’t deep seated. He wondered, though, if basically these youngsters were any wiser than he had been at their age. They knew the facts; but they didn’t know what to do with them, any more than he did. Maybe he was just old and cynical. He felt old. When he looked at Kwame, he felt even older.

Time, and the double frappé, had had their effect; whatever drug it was that Kwame had taken, it was beginning to wear off. He sat up straighter and began to join in the conversation. His comments had no particular profundity. But the young pair responded like disciples to the utterances of the prophet. When Kwame cleared his throat, they stopped talking, sometimes in the middle of a word, and listened with wide, respectful eyes.

Michael, whose mental age was rapidly approaching the century mark, found himself strangely reluctant to introduce the subject he wanted to discuss. He was relieved when Kwame gave him an opening.

“You’re twenty-five now? You must have been a student, six years ago.”

“Bright,” Kwame said. The blonde giggled appreciatively.

“You were here when Gordon Randolph was teaching here.”

“Right…”

The response wasn’t quite so prompt.

“I’m doing a biography of him.”

“Groovy,” Kwame said.

Michael persisted.

“I’ve been interviewing people who knew him because I have a weird notion that personality, or character, or whatever, isn’t an objective, coherent whole. It’s a composite, a patchwork of reflections of the man as he appeared to others.”

That interested them. The blond girl nodded, smoothing her hair, and Kwame’s dreamy eyes narrowed.

“Personality, maybe,” he said. “But not character. Two different things.”

“How do you mean?”

“Character, you call it-soul, inner essence-not a patchwork. One integrated essence.”

“All part of the Infinite Consciousness?”

Kwame shook his head. The beard swayed.

“I don’t dig that Zen stuff. All part of an infinite something. Names don’t name, words don’t define. You’ve gotta feel it, not talk about it.”

“Hmmm.” The collegiate atmosphere must be getting him, Michael thought; he had to resist the temptation to plunge down that fascinating side track. “But that inner core, the integrated essence-that’s beyond the grasp of a finite worm like myself. All I’m trying to get is the personality. I’m hung up on words.”

“All hung up on words,” Kwame murmured.

“So you can’t tell me anything about Randolph?”

“Man, I can’t tell you anything about anything.”

This was evidently one of the proverbs of the Master. The blonde looked beatific, and her escort exhaled deeply through his nostrils, fixing his eyes on Kwame. Michael turned to them with the feeling that he was fighting his way through a web of gauze.

“Neither of you knew him, I suppose?”

“My sister was here then,” the blonde said. She sighed. “She said he was the sexiest man she ever saw.”

“Great,” Michael muttered. “Haven’t any of you read his book? It’s a study of one of the problems that concern you-decadence, decay, the collapse of a society’s moral fiber.”

Even as he spoke, he knew he was dropping words into a vacuum. They professed concern about certain issues, but the only opinions they allowed were the opinions of their contemporaries and those of a few selected “in” writers. Many of them rejected the very idea that any generation but their own had searched for universal truths. Unaccountably irritated, Michael turned to Kwame, who was nodding dreamily in rhythm to a tune only he could hear.

“If you’re not hung up on words, why do you use them? You use them well. A couple of those songs were-remarkable. You wrote them, didn’t you? Words as well as music?”

Kwame stopped swaying, but he didn’t answer for several seconds. When he turned dark, dilated eyes on Michael, the latter felt an uneasy shock run through him. He had reached Kwame, all right; he felt, illogically, as if he had said something deeply insulting or obscene.

“Only two,” Kwame said. “I only wrote two of them.”

“They were the best,” Michael said. “You ought to perform more of your compositions.”

A spasm contorted Kwame’s face.

“I don’t write songs now. Not for a long time.”

“Why not?”

“I can’t anymore.”

Kwame put his head down on the table and began to cry.

The other two were staring at Michael with naked hostility, but he hardly noticed. The fact that he did not understand Kwame’s distress did not lessen his feeling of guilt at having somehow provoked it. He felt as if he had struck out blindly with a club and maimed something small and helpless, something that responded with a shriek of pain.

“I’m sorry,” he said quickly. “I didn’t mean-”

Kwame raised his head. The top fringes of his beard were damp, and tears still filled his eyes; but he made no move to wipe them away.

“You don’t know what you mean,” he whispered. “You see the shadows on the wall of the cave and you think they’re real. Man, you don’t know what’s out there, in the dark, on the other side of the fire.”

So they still read the old-fashioned philosophers. Michael recognized the allusion, it was one of the few images that remained from his enforced study of Plato. Humanity squatting in the cave, compelled to view the shadows cast on the wall by a flickering fire as the real world, never seeing the Reality that cast the shadows… But his original reading had not evoked the chill horror that gripped him at Kwame’s words. What Beings, indeed, might stalk the darkness outside the world, and cast distorted shadows? Whatever They were, Kwame knew about them. Michael had the irrational feeling that if he looked long enough into the boy’s wide, liquid eyes, he would begin to see what Kwame had seen…

Drugs, he told himself. Drug-induced hallucinations…His incantation of the conventional dispelled the shadows, and he said gently, “It’s all right. I’m sorry. Forget the whole thing.”

Kwame shook his head.

“Can’t forget…anything. I need something. Need…” His eyes turned toward the others, silent, defensive, watching. “You got anything? Grass? Acid?”

The blonde gulped, glancing at Michael. The boy, who seemed to have better control of himself, said calmly, “Nobody carries the stuff, Kwame, you know that. Not in here, anyhow.”

“Then let’s go someplace.” Kwame shoved futilely at the table and tried to stand. “Let’s go-”

The flutter of agitation had spread out beyond their table; other patrons were staring.

Michael sat perfectly still. Kwame’s agitation was beyond reassurance; all he could do was refrain from any move or comment that might seem to threaten or condemn. In fact he felt no sense of condemnation, only a profound pity. After a moment, Kwame relaxed. There was perspiration on his forehead.

“Sorry,” he said, giving Michael another of those sweet smiles. “We’ve gotta go now.”

“I’ve enjoyed talking to you,” Michael said. “And I enjoyed your performance. You’re really good.”

“Sorry I couldn’t help you.”

“That’s all right.”

“And thanks for the food.”

“It was a pleasure.”

The other two were standing, looking nervous as singed cats. But Kwame seemed to be bogged down in a mass of conventionalities.

“Sorry I couldn’t-”

“It doesn’t matter.”

Kwame brooded.

“I knew her,” he said suddenly.

“Who? Oh…” Michael knew how a policeman must feel when confronting, single-handed, a hopped-up addict with a gun. He didn’t know what was safe to say. Kwame spared him the trouble.

“Linda. She’s his wife now.”

“I know.”

“Beautiful,” Kwame said; Michael knew he was not referring to Linda’s face or figure. “A beautiful human being. We tripped together.”

Balanced between caution and curiosity, Michael still hesitated to speak. Why hadn’t he thought of that? Drugs might help to explain…Kwame seemed to sense what he was thinking.

“Not pot, nothing like that. She didn’t need it. She was on a perpetual trip.” He sighed. “Beautiful human being.”

“Yes,” Michael ventured. “Did Randolph take-”

Kwame shook his head.

“Oh, no,” he said gravely. “Not him. He didn’t need it either.”

He started to walk away, his companions falling in behind him like a guard of honor. Then he turned back to Michael.

“He always knew about it.”

“About what?”

“The dark,” Kwame said impatiently. “The dark on the other side.”